1. Field
The following relates to administration of large scale networks, and more particularly to security concerns in such networks.
2. Description of Related Art
Security of networks and computers served by those networks has long been important. As corporate networks have gotten larger, systems for automating security procedures also have continued to develop. One development is the notion of a firewall that has distributed points of presence to protect a corporate network from intrusions from outside. Network equipment, such as switches and routers, as well as more dedicated network intrusion detection equipment also have become more full-featured, allowing more stateful impactful of packets, better discrimination as to actual content of packets transmitted in a certain protocol, VLANs, and so on.
These improvements have helped security in corporate networks. There is a continued divergence however between the needs of average corporate networks and very large networks. Scalability, support for homogeneity, and other aspects are increasingly critical factors in maintaining security in such very large networks. Further innovations in these areas are desirable, as explained below.